Abstract
Corrugated metal pipes (CMPs) have been used as culverts in North America since the 1950s. Today, corrosion of CMPs is a major problem that requires an urgent and efficient solution to retrofit thousands of corroded CMPs across the country. One potential solution gaining wide acceptance is to use a fit-in Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) liner inside the old CMPs and to connect them using polymer grout. In this paper, a methodology to retrofit corrugated metal culvert using a fit-in GFRP profile liner was developed and implemented. First, material characterization of the GFRP material and the epoxy grout were carried out for proper design of the retrofit system. Second, full-scale CMP-GFRP composite section was tested under three-point bending configuration to observe the retrofitted culvert behavior to failure. The new CMP-GFRP section develops full composite action and shows failure capacity of 75 kip with a deflection of 3.52 in at the end of the test. Post failure of the polymeric grout, GFRP pipe failure was observed at mid-span location starting on the tension side. A finite element model was developed to understand the behavior of the CMP-GFRP composite pipe and to allow for the efficient design of the proposed retrofitting system.
Highlights
Culverts are water structures that facilitate the smooth conveyance of water without affecting the flow of water into the surrounding ecosystem
A new retrofitting technique using fit-in Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) profile liner for corrugated metal pipes (CMPs) used in culverts has been developed and tested
The CMP-epoxy grout-GFRP section was tested under static load to failure in three-point bending
Summary
Culverts are water structures that facilitate the smooth conveyance of water without affecting the flow of water into the surrounding ecosystem. Metal culverts were designed for a life expectancy of 50 years. Recent investigations indicated that corrosion could drop the life expectancy of those culverts below 30 years [4]. Numerous incidents on CMPs culvert failures because of corrosion are reported in the literature [4]. Installation cost of a new culvert is relatively high due to its possible disruption of service and potential closure of highways. Those costs can be higher than the cost of rebuilding the culvert itself [4, 5]. Retrofitting of existing culverts is more feasible because of the complexity involved with un-backfilling, deconstruction, reconstruction, associated traffic disruption, and delay costs
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